Bush, S. Korea's Roh set to discuss strategy

Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle News Service

Published
5:30 am CDT, Monday, May 12, 2003

WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il went into seclusion during the final buildup to the war in Iraq because he feared that he too might be the target of attack, leading the Pentagon to consider new ways to hold him and his inner circle at risk as a way of bolstering deterrence on the peninsula, officials say.

According to intelligence reports, Kim vanished from public view for 50 days starting in mid-February, a time when the Pentagon also moved bombers into the Korean area of operations.

Now, the military's ability to mount precision attacks on leadership targets in Iraq is being examined to see how it might apply in a tense standoff with North Korea, perhaps influencing North Korea's behavior without ever firing a shot.

A senior Defense Department official said that lessons from the attacks against Saddam Hussein, including short-notice airstrikes on suspected hideouts in the opening and closing days of the war, are shaping discussions of how best to rearrange the U.S. military presence in South Korea and nearby in the Pacific.

The goal would be to assemble in the Korean region the same kind of detailed intelligence on high-priority targets -- including the location of leadership -- and the ability to strike almost instantaneously with precision weapons should the need arise.

Meanwhile, South Korea's leader traveled to the United States on Sunday for consultations with President Bush on the North Korean nuclear crisis, keenly aware that Pyongyang will be looking for any sign of a rift as it plots strategy.

Bush and South Korea's President Roh Moo-hyun will almost certainly take a different tack than in 2001, when Bush and the previous South Korean president, Kim Dae-jung, met in Washington. That summit exposed sharp differences in how the two allies viewed communist North Korea.

Even though the policy differences remain, Bush and Roh are likely to reaffirm their military and economic partnership when they meet for the first time.

"Previous South Korea-U.S. summits have been burdened by high expectations," Roh told reporters on a chartered Korean Air passenger plane before arriving in New York on Sunday afternoon. "I hope the talks will confirm our common approach to resolving the North Korean nuclear issue and also the importance of the South Korea-U.S. alliance."

Roh said the summit won't yield "spectacular" results, adding: "On matters of detail, there are different points of view. But on the big matters of principle, we are in accord."